


The Price of Knickknacks

by Sid_Loves_Andy



Series: The Adventures of Young Peter Quill and the Ravagers [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Peter's Childhood Wasn't As Sucky As It Seemed, Yondu Saves Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-14
Packaged: 2018-02-13 02:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2134431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sid_Loves_Andy/pseuds/Sid_Loves_Andy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's childhood with the Ravagers was not as horrible as the other Guardians have come to believe.</p><p>In which Peter starts to like Yondu, and Yondu admits that some things in life mean more if you pay for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Knickknacks

Yondu was up the creek without a paddle, and the damn lifeboat had a hole in it.

The Terran runt had proven himself to be much more of a hassle than Yondu had expected, with his odd customs and expectations of 'family'. Apparently, on Earth, murder as a form of retribution when one party reneged on a business arrangement was 'wrong'. Consequently,  _eating_ said red-faced bastard had sent the kid into a crying fit for hours. Not even Kraglin could talk the kid back from that particular outburst. 

But they'd agreed to play it by his rules, more or less. There was no more gutting of unfortunate souls who dared cross the Ravagers (at least, not that Peter was aware of), and the carnal desires of the crew went unsatisfied. In exchange, one the one year anniversary of Peter's arrival aboard the ship, the little boy had presented Yondu with a box. It was haphazardly wrapped by a child's fumbling hands, and Yondu accepted it with the apprehension of one who had never recieved a present before.

"Go on. Open it." Peter was grinning. The kid was missing his two front teeth, so his grin had a hole in the middle of it. 

"What is it?" Yondu shook it a few times, just to make sure that it wouldn't explode. Who knew what that kid got up to in his room? All Yondu knew was that it was too much of a mess for him to take his life in his hands to find out.

"Careful!" That grin disappeared as his hands shot out to steady the box in Yondu's hands. "You're gonna break it."

Yondu raised an eyebrow. Breakable, but not explosive. He was a little less sure of himself as he peeled the paper away. When the child deemed he was taking too long, however, he jumped in and started to tear the paper off of the box. Yondu could take a hint, and began to tear at the paper as well. Soon, all that remained was a dingy cardboard box, likely salvaged from Knowhere, with it's tabs closed over the object that Peter was so anxious for him to see.

"Kraglin said that you liked knickknacks, and I know that it's not much, but I wanted to say thank you -," the boy's eyes widened as Yondu lifted the tabs and pulled out the hood ornament that Peter had carefully selected back on Earth. "What do you think?" He finished breathlessly.

"How much you pay for this, kid?" Peter's cheeks flushed hotly with embarrassment. Even at his young age, he recognized the taboo that was asking how much a present had cost. 

He shuffled from side to side uneasily, before meekly confessing, "Fifteen units."

A measly price, but still much too expensive by a thief's standards. He whistled sharply. "That's a pretty steep price for this hunk a junk, kid. Anythin' worth havin' in this here Galaxy is stolen goods." Yondu shook his head - the poor, foolish Terran runt had been cheated. 

"I just... I wanted... I thought you'd  _like_ it." His embarrassment was making it difficult for him to convey his thoughts effectively. And then, as if he was not already tortured enough, the first hot wave of tears burned at the corners of his eyes, gathered on his lashes, and promptly spilled over.

The Terran runt scrubbed furiously at his eyes, which only seemed to cause them to swell and become red and irritated under the constant attention. He was toughening up - one year aboard a Ravager ship would do that to someone - but he was still just a little kid and sometimes Yondu would stumble upon him in a quiet, dark corner of the ship, alone and sobbing. Until now, almost all of his breakdowns had been like that. Alone. Solitary. Confined.

Hesitating a moment, he took the little potted sunflower and placed it on the control panel, front and center. As soon as he set it down, the flower started to rock back and forth, as if propelled by an invisible finger. It certainly wasn't anything that he'd waste his time stealing himself, and he wasn't particularly thrilled that the kid had wasted his money on it... but the kid stopped crying when he saw where Yondu had put the knickknack, and that, if nothing else, was something to be thankful for.

And then, Peter launched himself at Yondu's stomach, throwing his arms around Yondu's middle and giving a quick, uncertain squeeze. He drew back as quickly as he had gone in, his cheeks hot with embarrassment once again. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, before running off to do whatever it was he did in the privacy of his bedroom. Yondu made to grab the knickknack off of the control panel... but decided against it at the last minute.

"The damn runt is gonna make a sap of me." Yondu said, partly disgusted with himself and partly amazed at how the runt had changed him in a year. And as he entered the coordinates for their newest heist, the potted sunflower bobbed from side-to-side on the dash. 

* * *

It was several months until Yondu recieved the next knickknack. They were on a planet locked in permafrost, tracking down the elusive ice crystal that had once bestowed the royal family with the ability to maintain eternal youth, like they were frozen in time. It seemed oddly fitting that Peter would find the mini snow globe while playing in a snow bank. He'd fallen into the thin white powder head-first, and had popped up several seconds later with the little globe in his glove-covered hands.

He blew on the glass surface, smiling as the snow fanned out into the open air. Yondu and Kraglin had watched him from afar, thinking that the runt's desire to play in the snow was a distinctly Terran trait. Kraglin was cold and cranky, not liking the way that the snow seemed to get just about  _everywhere_. Yondu was anxious to finish the heist and get the hell out of dodge, as they were a little too close to Thanos' territory for comfort.

"Yondu!" And suddenly, the little boy was fumbling in his snow pile, falling over himself more often than not. "Yondu, look!" He promptly fell face-first into the snow, and laughed, the powdery white mixing in with the sandy blond of his hair. 

"Watch yourself, Peter!" Kraglin had half a mind to go and grab the boy before he went and broke something, but just as he went to do so, Peter regained his footing and stumbled over to them. He brandished the snow globe proudly. "What you got there, kid?"

"It's a snow globe! You shake it like this," he shook it ferociously, and then held it up for Yondu and Kraglin to see. "And then the snow falls down on the little village, like this! See! See!" He was so incredibly proud of his discovery. It was the first real thing he'd 'taken', and it sent a kind of fiery excitement burning through him.

"The stupid shit that'll entertain you never ceases to amaze me, kid." Yondu was less than impressed.

Peter thrust the snow globe at him, forcing it into his hand. "You try, Yondu!"

He wasn't sure why he did it, but he shook the little glass ball, just to keep the kid from going into hysterics. He'd learned his lesson from the dancing sunflower that was  _still_ sitting, mockingly, on the dash of the control panel. Snow poured down on the little village inside of the ball, just as it had when Peter demonstrated earlier. Yondu continued to find himself remarkably underwhelmed.

Peter, on the other hand, was over the moon. He took the ball back from Yondu and shook it reverently, explaining to no-one in particular, "My mom used to buy these all the time at the Christmas shop and put them on the mantle. I bet they're..." here, he started to slow, sadness kicking in, "I bet they're all dusty now."

Kraglin placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, asking, "Do you want to keep it? You can, you know. As your own booty from the job."

"No." Peter shook his head sadly. He turned, and buried it back in the snow bank. "What if someone comes looking for it? It's really well made. I'm sure that whoever it belongs to must be really worried about having lost it in the snow."

Yondu slapped a hand over his eyes, once again reflecting on his sheer lack of willpower when it came to deciding to make the runt into a 'pirate' instead of turning him over to his father. "The whole point to stealin' is that possession is nine-tenths of the law. It ain't  _your_ fault they left their toy in the snow." 

Now, it was Peter's turn to look unimpressed. "That's not very nice."

"I'll let you in on a little secret, kid." Yondu squatted down so that he was at eye-level with the boy. " _I'm_ not very nice."

They didn't talk about the snow globe again and Yondu had, mistakenly, thought that it was behind them. The mission had been a success overall and the ice crystal had been safely delivered for a bounty of sixteen million units. For actually making himself  _somewhat_ useful on the mission, Peter recieved a cut of about two thousand units. It was more money than the boy had seen in his entire life, and it was a wonder that they'd  _ever_ expect him to spend all of it.

Not a week later, Yondu recieved yet another present. This one wasn't in a box, so he could tell that it was circular - and that was a pretty immediate give-away. He shook it once, and when it didn't immediately explode, he tore at the paper. Inside, he was not surprised to find a snow globe. However, he  _was_ surprised to find that it was much more complex than your run of the mill snow globe.

Inside, Ravager ships were forever frozen mid-flight, and when you shook the snow globe, red beams shot out of the front of their ships. Yondu grinned. The boy was learning, at least, and had significantly improved from the dancing sunflower that still sat undisturbed aboard the dash. This, however... This deserved a place of honor. He placed it back in a small crevice, so that if they ran into turbulence, it wouldn't fall and shatter.

Peter recieved a half-pat on the head for his efforts, which could almost be mistaken for affection. Almost. "Good work, kid."

* * *

The troll doll actually started out as a gag.

"It looks like you." Peter said, brandishing the orange-skinned doll. Yondu had seen some pretty fucked up things in his time, but this doll... it was a new level of weird. And Peter wasn't making things any better by lovingly stroking the doll's radioactive orange locks.

"Oh, really?" And Kraglin was snickering, despite the death-glare Yondu was sending his way. "'Cause I think it looks more like  _you_." He pointed a finger at Kraglin, who scowled defensively. "I mean, what exactly do you call that ugly tuft a hair on your head?"

Kraglin crossed thin arms over his chest, "At least I  _have_ hair."

Yondu's left eye twitched. "Don't tempt me to cut that scraggly mess of your head while your sleeping."

Peter tilted his head to the side, and decided that that look wouldn't suit Kraglin at all. Not that he thought Yondu would ever  _really_  go through with it. Yondu liked to make what Kraglin called 'empty threats'. That meant that he was just scary enough to keep the other Ravagers in line, but he really thought of them like a surrogate family and would never actually want any harm to befall them. 

While Kraglin and Yondu were arguing, Peter had taken the doll over to the cashier and paid for it. It had cost a measly three units, but he decided that he wouldn't tell this to Yondu. He'd seemed so terribly disappointed when Peter had confessed to spending fifteen units on the dancing sunflower, and Yondu had just recently taken to calling Peter 'son'. After almost a year and a half, he finally felt as if he'd been accepted and didn't want to chance ruining that.

"Get your ass over here, boy! We're leaving  _now_ , with or without your sorry ass." Another group of Ravagers had been on a mission that had quickly turned sour, and they were under threat of immediate capture. And Yondu was  _beyond_ furious.

Peter arrived seconds later, breathless from running halfway across the store. He looked to Kraglin, "He wouldn't really just leave me here... would he?" 

Kraglin gave him a sympathetic look and Peter had his answer. But before any of them could say anything, the door burst open and heavily-armored men poured into the little corner shop. "Think you could come steal our shit and we wouldn't give a damn, Yondu?"

When Yondu started to whistle, Kraglin scooped Peter up and rushed the back door. Peter hadn't seen Yondu kill someone in nine months and that was good, and Kraglin quite preferred to keep it that way. But as they rushed away from the scene, the bag fell from Peter's hands. It fell to the floor with a soft  _thud,_ spilling onto its side and allowing the troll doll to roll out onto the floor. Peter  _screamed,_ attracting unneeded and unwanted attention as he suddenly began to struggle in Kraglin's arms.

As soon as Peter's feet hit the floor, he was off. He could hear Kraglin behind him, his voice seeming so  _loud_ in the near-silence of the battle, and his voice mixed with the  _smack-smack-smack_ of his sneakers on the tile. His hand had just closed around the paper bag when he felt a body looming over his, heavy and ominous. The barrel of a pistol was at his back and he barely had time to feel the hot sting of tears before there was a loud  _thud_ as the body collapsed behind him.

And before he can really think about how close he'd just come to the end, he's scooped up in Yondu's left arm and hanging limply at the captain's side. "You okay, son?" It's not a question, even though it is posed as one. They don't talk like that, on such a personal level, unless the circumstances were dire.

But Kraglin's a fucking mess, caught between wanting to tear off Peter's head and squeezing him so tightly that he can't breathe. He chose the latter. "You do that again and I'll personally see to it that that the crew eats Terran stew for dinner, you hear me? No stupid doll is worth your life."

Peter never gave Yondu the troll doll. Not until that fateful encounter with the future Guardians of the Galaxy, where he substituted it for the infinity stone. And when he did that, it carried with it a subconscious message that both immediately were able to understand. When Peter was young, he'd needed someone to watch his back, to take out those too cowardly to take him on face-to-face. Now, with the help of the Guardians, he was wise enough to do it himself... but knew that he didn't have to.

* * *

There were a variety of other knickknacks that were acquired over the time that Peter was with the Ravagers. They each gained their own special marker on the dash of the control panel, but this fact was never spoken of. Until the original Ravager ship was destroyed, that is. After that, many of the knickknacks that had lined the control panel were forgotten relics of space, another fact that was never spoken of. Until...

"I'll be taking these." Yondu informed the broker, as he took the knickknacks off of the shelf and placed them into his bag with uncharacteristic care.

"I can't tell if he's serious or not." The broker flushed, mumbling on about high-society clientele who would be furious to find that their most beloved relics had been stolen by a band of filthy space pirates.

"I'm afraid that he's dead serious." Kraglin said, before stepping out of the way as Yondu took his leave. It was time to return the knickknacks to where they belonged. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was a little hesitant to post this one after it took a completely different direction from what I'd planned, but... 
> 
> How come all of my one-shots always come out to around 2700 words??? Lol
> 
> As always, inspired by the wonderful prompts at: http://guardian-kink.livejournal.com/
> 
> Thank you all for your continued support!


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